Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,384 other followers

The Best Cardio

I feel you girls. Cardio is hard. Running isn’t empowering, it brings u close to death, your butt aches, your calves get sore. But no regime is complete without cardio. Cardio is essential to shed fat, leaning your body out and gives u the definition u want. Cardio is also necessary in becoming a healthier person overall. It increases blood flow, rejuvenates your body and prevents water retention. But… the trouble is what if u don’t like running?

As you guys are aware, there are two types of cardio- LISS and HIIT. Both are extremely different but aids in weight loss tremendously, it also ensures a steady pace in achieving a healthy lifestyle.

Firstly, LISS stands for low intensity steady state such as walking. Walking is a low intensity exercise at which you stay at the same pace for the whole time. LISS therefore is any moderate or long duration cardiovascular exercise that maintains the same intensity throughout. LISS is recommended as it involves the most fat burning during the workout, as fat gets oxygenated it breaks down and tadah! Gone! However, it takes a long time and doesn’t increase your metabolism.

Secondly, HIIT stands for high intensity interval training that is “circuit” training. “Circuit” training encompasses a “rest” and “work” period. Thus, it will involve a series of fast pace cardio vascular exercises back to back for a selected time period. Mostly involving routines such as high knees, jump squats, sprinting and anything that makes your heart race. The benefit of HIIT is that it ensures fat burning even after your workout. Thus it is one of the most effective ways of shedding fat. Furthermore, as proven by research, HIIT increases your metabolic rate meaning u burn more in a shorter amount of time. HIIT increases mitochondrial capacity and you actually increase the amount of mitochondria you produce. Studies show that you get greater fat loss through high intensity training because of the increase in oxidative capacity. blah blah blah it just means weight lost!

but… HIIT is extremely taxing on your body thus I recommend to combine both HIIT and LISS for the best cardio in any workout. Here are the following reasons why:
You can’t do HIIT 5-6 days a week because eventually it will have a negative impact on your weight training and interfere with growth
Many people have legitimate orthopedic, cardiac, and even psychological reasons to avoid HIIT, so LISS is their only option
HIIT could be dangerous if not used right and could lead to injury
HIIT and LISS on either a combined, cyclical, or rotational basis seems to be the best formula in my opinion

So lets get started! This is a 15min HIIT workout that u can incorporate into any regime u have. Your time on the treadmill can be replaced doing this. There is only 1 circuit. One round would be 7min long, with a 30s rest. Meaning that you’ll do this for 7min straight
1. Burpess 10reps

2. Squat Jumps 20reps

3. Tricep dips 15reps

4. Split lunge jumps 16reps

Land on your alternate leg. For example if u start off with the right lend with the left.